StephanStengel

Become an S4GRU Sponsor and you will be able to see the exact locations of Sprint towers in McHenry County, and their exact current status. (A hint to the non-sponsors: There are many Sprint towers out here in far suburbia, but the number with operating LTE is somewhat low.) Also, the Sensorly.com Sprint 4G map is a very good indicator of where 4G is all over Chicagoland, because lots of people seem to be doing the mapping. Verizon has better 4G here, but AT&T coverage currently appears to be no better than Sprint, and may not be as good.

That's exactly what I did.

Using Robert's Sponsor maps, I was able to locate the NV targeted Sprint towers nearest to my home. I then compared that map to the "NV complete sites complete" map. This corroborated the fact that my local tower did not have NV upgrades as of yet.

Shortly after my local tower appeared on the NV complete sites map, I did in fact did get LTE at my home...

Didn't do anything to speed the process up of course, but at least gives you a clear picture as to what to expect at your location...

Similar situation.

 

I'm 2,125 feet away from a NV tower that has not had any work done yet and am still at 3G at home. Insult to injury, I'm surrounded by about 20 LTE towers within a 5 mile radius.

Well, got good news yesterday. Loaded up Robert's "NV Sites Complete" map and saw my local tower appear for the first time as a blue pin (3G/800).

A quick check at network.sprint.com and saw that it was updated with 1 data speed upgrade...tho no LTE on the S3 at that time. Then later last night I glanced at the phone again, and lo and behold, it was finally showing 4G goodness.

Checked network.sprint.com today and it now shows 2 data speed upgrades. Speedtest.net shows 13 to 14Mbps down and 7 to 8Mbps up. RSRP's in the low to mid -90's and I'm a happy guy!

How can you be " 2,125 feet away from a NV tower that has not had any work done yet?" If it hasn't had any work done yet, it's not an NV tower....

The tower is on Robert's Network Vision Site Map, and missing from his NV Complete Sites map for the Chicago area...

If - yes, there are several towers yet to be upgraded. The when part, that's trickier. It's hard to know where they are in the process. However, we do know that all the towers will be upgraded, that much you can count on.

Similar situation.

I'm 2,125 feet away from a NV tower that has not had any work done yet and am still at 3G at home. Insult to injury, I'm surrounded by about 20 LTE towers within a 5 mile radius.

Yeah, if Samsung has finished the 4G at the site, but Sprint has not come back out yet to inspect it, it is possible that it would be operating and not yet shown on our maps.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Forum Runner

Yup...as of yesterday's updates, a few the previously blue (800/3G) pinned towers are now green (800/3G/4G) in Palatine.

They still haven't touched the tower closest to me tho...

I cant figure out where the service is coming from. The towers in my area dont show any purple. One is over a mile away and in chicago there are a lot of buildings in the way. Also that tower would have been giving me service since it went on early this month. so that's out. I do want the service to be as fast as irving and clark. Damned that was fun to play with. Just cant figure out which tower is actually giving me the signal. And yes I do know that it is very signal dependent. It must be coming from the west of me as the towers to the east have been up and running for a few weeks now.I never believe my bars . I believe speed tests and downloads and NOT dropped calls. If you can find out some more info from the little birdies you have ( not the ones that nested earlier BTW) I would appreciate it.

Thank You very much Robert.

Are you referencing Robert's Samsung Completed NV Sites map? Note that 4G is also noted by green and yellow pins (in addition to purple).

Having said that, I know that blue pinned "3G/800" sites may also have 4G as well (timing issue with updates I would imagine) as there's a couple by me that are blue and have had LTE implemented for a few weeks now.

Just began seeing LTE on my EVO 4g LTE in Schaumburg IL near Schaumburg Rd and Summit. It has been spotty and the speeds aren't all that hot yet.

Yah...comparing the NV map vs. the COMPLETED NV map, there's still a bunch of towers that have yet to be touched.

I eyeballed 40-50 NV towers centered around the Schaumburg/EGV/Rolling Meadows area. There's only around half that amount of towers in the COMPLETED map of the same area.

I was at the Intersection of Rand Road and Route 83 this morning, got 4G signal and did a speed test. It was 25.7Mb download and 7.8Mb upload. Blazing fast. However, my phone (Galaxy Siii) went into Eastern Time. Now I notice that whenever I get to a 4G area, the phone goes to Eastern Time, then when I go to a 3G area it reverts back to Central time.

Called Sprint for a laugh and they admitted it's a known problem, just like the dropped calls. Said I will get a credit at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

By the way, the tower in downtown Mount Prospect on Northwest Highway was putting out 4G, but is not doing so today. Sprint said it should be fixed in a few days.

Yah...looks like CH60XC054 (NV Complete 4G) is on the SE corner of that intersection (Rand and 83).

Was on the 26th floor of 150 S. Wacker in the Loop today between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. - could not get a voice signal very well but picked up 4g for the first time in the city (live in Lincoln Park, have S3 and work in Loop.) Was in a meeting so did not check speed in any detailed way - but it seemed way faster than 3g. Now, back in my office about 1/2 mile to northeast and there is no signal.

My office is in the Sears Tower...been telecommuting for a few months now, so no LTE reports from there, but on the old EVO Wimax, I got zero Wimax 4G signal on the east side of the building (about 30 floors up). We then got moved to the west side and with a desk facing the windows, I got a pinch of Wimax about 2/3rds of the time. Moving the phone a few inches to the left or right could make or break a 4G connect.

Will have to head back downtown one of these days when there's a bit more LTE action going.

Here's something that I've been putting together over the last month. I've been doing a screenshot about once per week. It's a little rough around the edges and probably not the most accurate thing to go by given that it's crowdsourced data, but it at least gives some idea of how things are progressing.

 

 

EDIT: the dates of each screenshot are 9/18/12, 9/27/12, 10/2/12, and 10/9/12. Sorry, the text at the top of each shot might not be totally clear.

Nice...was thinking that map coverage over time would be a good addition to have at sensorly...

I did a quick eyeball comparison of the sensorly heat maps for palatine against the NV Sites Complete map here on s4gru.

Not surprisingly, the dark purple spots on sensorly correspond to Sprint tower locations...tho there is a lag issue where a couple of the towers pumping out LTE love on sensorly are pinned here as 800/3G (versus 800/3G/4G)...

Of the 11 sprint towers within a 3-4 mile radius of my house, 8 are on the NV Sites Complete map...the pisser being that the closest tower to me (half mile away) is one of the three yet to be upgraded, so as of now, there's no LTE love at home..

It was strange, my phone said there was a system update this morning, and after i installed it I connected to 4G. Anyone else have an update today?

L710VPLI3? I got this update over the weekend. And yes, LTE connectivity was tinkered with...

Sep 19, 2012 10:09 AM

9/19 - Samsung Galaxy S III Software Update - L710VPLI3

Samsung Galaxy SIII Software Update - L710VPLI3

Enhancements/Fixes

- Inclusion of SWYPE keyboard

- Improved LTE connectivity

- SMS Messaging improvements

- EAS sync improvements

Important Notes:

- The new software version is: L710VPL13

- Updates may be released in stages. When checking for the update, you may receive a message

that no update is available, check back later or wait until the update notification is sent to your device.

- Refer to the Samsung Galaxy SIII Software Updates blog for install instructions.

I'm guessing a good chunk of the Sprint LTE Sensorly data is coming from users on this site. I had heard of it before knowing of this site, but never used it. With the new deployment of LTE instead of Wimax, and this site being the unquestioned go-to site for information, I think that explains most of it.

 

As more and more of us travel around, we'll get more coverage area. I'm turning Sensorly on most of the time in my car, but that's pretty much about it.

 

I can get LTE right outside my office, but no GPS in the building, so I can't map it at all. Guy is coming to fix my windshield today, so maybe I'll be able to pick it up outside my building and map it while he works his magic...

 

EDIT: Mad respect for getting a GSIII over the Evo, you'll be happy.

Am going to agree with you on the amount of sensorly tracking coming from this site.

I did toggle the Sprint LTE map vs. ATT and Verizon LTE and while certainly more "mature" products, they don't have the mapping coverage around my area that Sprint has.

Oh, and checked my phone this morning and discovered that sensorly had a backlog of "messages to send" to their server. Toggled the update settings on and off and they started to upload. The big rectangle in palatine (up hicks, across cunningham, down rohlwing and palatine west) is me!

And yes, i've been an HTC guy with the advent of the original EVO, so the switch to samsung was a big deal for me. Still getting used to the different UI, but am happy with the purchase.

well, i returned the EVO LTE (initially due to the camera dying after 2 days) and with the LTE issues of the phone, i've gone ahead and gotten a galaxy s3 as replacement.

did some sensorly tracking around the palatine area, as well as the trip down to my parents house in addison. am amused in that i've been the only one tracking sprint LTE to their area as it's the lone activity for a few square blocks.

anyways, i took some time tonite to criss cross across palatine...just checked, and it's not up as of yet. will check it again tomorrow.

When you could get the EVO to connect and hold a signal, the LTE performance was similar. It was just that the EVO LTE connectivity issues are enough to drive someone bat sh!t crazy! Maybe it will be further corrected in a future OTA. But after 3 OTA's it is still not fixed.

 

Robert via CM9 Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

Hi Robert,

I appreciate your candid thoughts as well as the peek at the upcoming article!

As it is, I got the EVO LTE last week, but the camera died after two days and I returned it to Amazon Wireless...

Am waiting for Amazon Wireless to process the return, and contact Sprint to reset my upgrade status.

I figured on getting a new EVO, but am now rethinking. I ordered the original EVO Wimax the first day it became available and it's been a good phone, tho this LTE issue is troubling. Yes, HTC will hopefully nail down the issue in the future, but I'd like to hit the ground running...

The S-III was my 2nd choice, but may be moving up a slot!

HTC EVO LTE, Samsung Galaxy S-III, Galaxy Nexus and LG Viper. We have articles about our performance testing that will be posting soon.

 

Robert

Looking forward to that Robert...would it be a fair statement to say that the S-III had better LTE performance that the EVO LTE in your comparison?

I tested four Sprint LTE devices at the same time in Waco. The LTE connectivity issues were related solely to the EVO.

 

Robert

Hi Robert,

Could I ask what the other 3 devices were?

Yah, having an EVO, this is disappointing to hear...

I don't always trust speedtest.net anyways. I usually verify my speeds by going to http://www.thinkbroa...m/download.html and downloading one of the test files while watching bandwidth in real-time using a bandwidth monitor app (actually, NetTraffic Widget in this case).

ooo...that's a keeper.

gets around the speedboost effect with comcast...

 

I connected to LTE for the first time driving on NW highway through palatine on my way to Lake Barrington. The connection was solid. I did many speed tests. The average was around 7 mbps down and 6 mbps up. Latency between 40-60ms. I have a Galaxy Nexus LTE and the 4G indicator had full bars.

sweet...i live in palatine, just off NW Hwy, and my EVO LTE arrives tomorrow!